Centereach woman’s home foreclosure is reversed

Centereach woman’s home foreclosure is reversed

She’s already been home for the holidays. Now, all Janet Beck needs to make that home officially hers again is a new loan in the new year.

Three months ago, Beck’s home on Alden Lane in Centereach was foreclosed upon, even after she said she did everything she was supposed to do to save it. But earlier this month, the West Islip attorney who purchased her home in an auction backed out of the deal, leaving the door open for Beck to keep it.

The foreclosure has been reversed and now Beck needs to secure a new loan to regain the title to the home, said Jean Hill, a spokesman for Beck’s carrier, M&T Mortgage Corp. of Buffalo. Alfred Jackson, who bought the house along with a group of investors, confirmed that he had voluntarily withdrawn from the sale

Beck, standing outside the modest yellow single-family house, repeated the words she’s said all along: “This is my house.”

Credit Downturn Hits the Malls

Credit Downturn Hits the Malls

The credit crunch triggered by the downturn in the housing market is creating problems in commercial real estate, driving down prices of office buildings, shopping malls and apartment complexes, and leaving some owners scrambling for cash.

One victim is Centro Properties Group, the fifth-largest owner of shopping centers in the U.S. The Australian real-estate company saw its share price fall by 90% in two days last week as it struggled to refinance short-term debt it took on to fund its $6.2 billion acquisition of New Plan Excel, one of the biggest owners of strip malls in the U.S.

Centro had planned to pay off the short-term loans by selling long-term debt via the commercial mortgage-backed securities market, but the lack of buyers forced it to get a two-month extension from its creditors. Commercial mortgage-backed securities, or CMBS, are pools of loans that are sliced up and sold to investors as bonds.

Dealing with those holdover tenants

Dealing with those holdover tenants

The question of “holdover” comes up often with commercial properties that we manage for our owners. This will occur when the original lease agreement has expired or terminated and the tenant does not have any option to renew contained in their original lease agreement. In its simplest definition, it is “maintaining possession of a property after the lease term has expired.”

The majority of lease agreements contain a specific “holdover” clause as part of the initial lease agreement. From a landlord’s point of view, it is not always a ‘negative’ to have a holdover situation.

In the current market we are experiencing in Southwest Florida and the changes in our commercial market, if the landlord does not have a replacement tenant for the space, allowing the tenant to remain may be a prudent business decision. By forcing the tenant to vacate, the landlord now still owns the vacant space that is non-rent producing. By allowing a tenant to remain, you not only have the benefit of the rental income, but may also be entitled to increased rent depending on how the holdover clause is defined in the original lease agreement.

Banks big buyers at Prewett auction

Banks big buyers at Prewett auction

Energy levels were high at former investment adviser Daniel Prewett’s Dec. 13 bankruptcy auction.

The Osprey Inn was bursting with more than 500 people, and the night concluded with all properties on the block being sold.

At first, it seemed the auction was revealing something about the real estate market. The packed house and fervent bidding made it seem as if the market had regained some of its froth.

But in the end, it turned out that banks were simply calling in their chips and will wait for another day to find genuine buyers.

Retirement plan interrupted

Retirement plan interrupted

When Patty Marquez graduated from the University of Minnesota more than five years ago and moved to Southern California, she thought about buying a house.

But with prices already sky-high in the Southland market, “I was scared,” says Marquez, now 31. So she rented for more than four years.

But all along, even as prices in the region continued to climb, she kept thinking to herself: Isn’t owning a home the right thing to do? Last February the school psychologist, who now makes $77,000 a year, took the plunge and purchased a $600,000 duplex, putting 3 percent down on a 40-year fixed-rate mortgage.

Though prices started to ease by the time she bought, her timing was still poor. Since Marquez bought the property in Signal Hill, Calif., just north of Long Beach, home values in her area have fallen more than 3 percent, and they’re expected to drop an additional 9 percent in 2008.

Homeowners with forgiven loan debt get timely tax break

Homeowners with forgiven loan debt get timely tax break

Families who lost their homes to the foreclosure crisis this year will have at least one reason for cheer this holiday season: They won’t have to worry about a big tax bill.

Shortly before adjourning last week for the year, Congress approved a tax-relief bill designed to help families who had a portion of mortgage debt forgiven. Some families have had such debt forgiven through a foreclosure, a short sale or a loan restructuring that enabled them to stay in their homes. (In a short sale, a home is sold for less than the amount of the loan.)

Ordinarily, forgiven debt is treated as taxable income. In the past, families who lost homes because they couldn’t afford mortgage payments were sometimes stuck with a huge tax bill.

The tax “is a double whammy, and it’s kind of a surprise whammy,” since most don’t realize that forgiven debt is taxable, says Mel Schwarz, partner at Grant Thornton’s national tax office.